The invention relates to messaging appliances such as facsimile machines, and to methods of providing transmission parameters to such appliances.
Despite the increasing use of computers and associated technologies, a large percentage of business activities and communications are documented on paper. This brings about a continued need for transferring both physical and electronic copies of paper documents.
In the past, paper documents were exchanged through a physical transfer process such as a postal service or other physical delivery service. More recently, electronic forms of communications have become more common. For example, facsimile machines (commonly referred to as fax machines) are used almost universally for transferring electronic copies of documents (referred to as facsimiles or faxes) between business entities.
Although messaging appliances such as fax machines have become very reliable, they are sometimes difficult to operate. One reason for this difficulty is that fax machines are typically equipped with only a small alphanumeric display and limited numeric keys. It is difficult to implement an intuitive user interface under these limitations.
Thus, there is a need for a more effective and intuitive way to instruct messaging appliances, such as fax machines, that have limited operator interface components.
A messaging appliance such as a fax machine has a scanner that captures images from paper documents. In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, instructions are given to the fax machine by writing the instructions on a sheet of paper. Each instruction consists of a keyword followed by one or more arguments. The keyword and its arguments are surrounded by predefined delimiters. The fax machine has optical character recognition software for detecting and interpreting the keywords and arguments.
Another embodiment of the invention includes the use of a printer in a messaging appliance. When a message (such as a fax) is received, it is printed on paper. In addition, the printer prints an origin identifier corresponding to the originator of the message. For example, the origin identifier might indicate a return facsimile number, from which the original message was sent. The printer also defines a reply input field on the paper, preferably next to the origin identifier. The reply input field is a region that can be marked or checked by a user. For example, the reply input field might be defined by a pair of parenthesis or brackets.
In accordance with this embodiment of the invention, the messaging appliance receives and prints a message including the origin identifier and reply input field. A user annotates the message, marks or checks the reply input field, and submits the annotated message to the messaging appliance for transmittal. The marked reply input field indicates that the annotated message is to be transmitted to the entity identified by the origin identifier. The message appliance detects that the reply input field has been marked and responds by transmitting the message to the originator of the original message.